


Fragments from a Love Affair

by Mothfinder_General



Series: Despite the Snow [3]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 10:53:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mothfinder_General/pseuds/Mothfinder_General
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of scenes cut away from the never-to-be-written sequel to The Kind Deceivers. Dominated by the triumverate of fluff, porn and misery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragments from a Love Affair

“What’s your ideal date?” asks Professor Sycamore one afternoon. They are having lunch together. To anyone glancing across the restaurant, it looks like the same friendly mixture of business and pleasure that marked their lunches before the Events at Calincourt; however, anyone crawling along the floor would notice their legs tangled under the table.

 

Lysandre raises an eyebrow, swallows his mouthful. “Why,” he asks, “have you turned into a magazine for teenage girls?”

 

“I’m curious,” says Professor Sycamore, nudging his ankle. “Indulge the teenage girl who lives in my heart and may well also control my brain.”

 

Lysandre sighs.

 

“Her name is Mélodie,” Professor Sycamore adds helpfully.

 

Lysandre shakes his head.

 

“Well, _my_ ideal date is a night of karaoke,” says Professor Sycamore.

 

“Last week your ideal date was going to the pop-up funfair in the 2nd arrondissement,” Lysandre points out wearily.

 

“I’ve changed my mind,” says Professor Sycamore happily. “Pick me up at eight, won’t you? I need to get my glam rags on first.”

 

+++

 

“Tell me you like my big cock in your mouth,” says Lysandre hoarsely. “Tell me you love taking all of it.”

 

Professor Sycamore puts up with a lot from Lysandre in bed – he has the bruises to prove it – but this is undoubtedly the stupidest thing that Lysandre has ever asked of him. How, he thinks, can I tell him that I think his big cock is fantastic when my mouth is _full of it_?  

 

So he starts to repeat exactly what Lysandre has said, but with the cock still in his mouth. He continues to extrapolate on its girth, magnificence and general desirability, all still with his mouth full.

 

“Alors,” says Lysandre, in his normal voice, “I take your point. As you were.”

 

But Professor Sycamore has warmed to his role now, and is gesticulating with both hands as he continues to mumble the praises of the aforementioned big cock. He compares it to Prism Tower, a freshly baked baguette, a particularly long line of code, a paralyzed Seviper, a berry tree dripping with berries. None of this is distinguishable because his mouth of full of a cock which, he cannot help but notice, is starting to soften, because you can’t keep a convincingly rock solid hard-on when you’re laughing as hard as Lysandre is.

 

+++

 

The arguments come out of nowhere and escalate fast.

 

They might be discussing the current schism in the government, and suddenly find themselves shouting at each other about how much Professor Sycamore worries about Lysandre (Lysandre claims he finds the attention ‘suffocating’; Professor Sycamore points out that Lysandre is not above turning up at his door at midnight, face white, eyes wide, desperate to be held). They might be deciding what film to see of an evening, and suddenly be in a screaming match about how often Professor Sycamore cries (Lysandre calls it childish and passive-aggressive; Professor Sycamore claims it’s a normal emotional reaction from someone with the requisite normal level of emotions). They might be talking about their joint favourite non-sex topic, Mega Evolution, and suddenly be yelling into one another’s faces about whether or not they are ‘boyfriends’ (Professor Sycamore thinks they are; Lysandre gets very weird about this for some reason).

 

More often than not, they will follow a set script, which sees Professor Sycamore shouting, “Why do we have to _fight_ all the fucking time? Why can’t we just have a normal relationship?”

 

And sees Lysandre shouting back, “Do you think _you’re_ normal? Do you think _I’m_ normal? Do you think _any of this_ is normal?”

 

On bad nights, one or the other of them might walk out. Most of the time it’s the Professor that walks out, and this means that on more than one occasion he has had to walk out of his own apartment. There are now streets he cannot walk through in daylight hours, because the sight of the familiar dip in the cobblestones or the familiar lonely lean of a streetlamp will send him back down the path of hopeless unhappiness.

 

On really awful nights, he’ll come back to find that Lysandre has gone, and then they may not speak for several days. On the merely dire nights, he’ll come back to find that Lysandre has gone to bed. He’ll climb in next to him and they’ll both lay, untouching, unsleeping, until misery and exhaustion drags one of them under.

 

On this occasion, it is a good night. They are standing up and leaning across a table in Professor Sycamore’s kitchen, snarling regrettable accusations at one another, when Lysandre snaps, apropos of nothing, “And your fingernails are filthy!”

 

Professor Sycamore glances down. Lysandre is right. His fingernails, which he has allowed to grow too long, have crescents of dirt underneath them. He has been doing fieldwork for most of the afternoon, sifting through soil and rock samples from areas where wild Pokemon have been seen to use unusual attacks or distorted powers.

 

Lysandre seizes his wrist and drags him into the bathroom, where he proceeds to wash Professor Sycamore’s hands roughly with soap and too-hot water. Professor Sycamore launches into his litany of insults, which Lysandre ignores.

 

“Where do you keep your nail clippers?” he growls.

 

“In the cupboard above the sink,” Professor Sycamore snaps. Their tones are still furious, but the words don’t match up.

 

Lysandre flings the cupboard door open, rummages around (knocking some earbuds and a bottle of pills into the sink) and finds the nail clippers. He drags Professor Sycamore into the living room, forces him down into a chair, kneels in front of him, and proceeds to carefully cut his nails.

 

They do not speak while Lysandre is doing this, and in the time it takes to render Professor Sycamore’s fingertips baby-pink and defenceless, they have both calmed down. When he is done, Lysandre puts the nail clippers aside, then bows his head and kisses both hands. When Professor Sycamore doesn’t respond, he tangles the hands in his hair, making them grasp and pull, and then he reaches for Professor Sycamore’s flies.

 

It’s not an apology but it’s the best that the Professor can hope for, in the circumstances.

 

+++

 

When they order food in restaurants, it is generally preceded by Lysandre asking Professor Sycamore what he wants to eat. Professor Sycamore will name two dishes from the menu, and they will decide which one of them orders which.

 

When the food arrives, Professor Sycamore will treat both platters as if they were his own, leaning across the table to steal scraps from Lysandre’s. He is fair-minded, however, and always makes sure he leaves choice bits from his meal on the edge of Lysandre’s plate. By the end of any meal, there will be a sticky network of sauces running from one plate to the other, punctuated by the occasional fallen bean or runaway rice grain.

 

“I can’t take you anywhere,” Lysandre says affectionately.

 

“Nonsense,” says Professor Sycamore. “We share beds, we share food, we share secrets, in fact the only thing we don’t share are clothes and toothbrushes, because I think your electric toothbrush is trying to kill me. What’s a little spilled gravy between friends?”

 

Lysandre smiles, but rather sadly. “You think we share all that, do you, mon ami?” he says, then asks for the bill.

 

+++

 

Professor Sycamore is naked and he has a ball gag in his mouth. His wrists are above his head – they are bound, and tied to sturdy hook in the ceiling. He is about to be beaten with a riding crop. He is trembling uncontrollably and his cock is so hard that he feels like the lightest tap will make him come. His entire body feels taut and vulnerable; he is already ecstatically and anxiously imagining the pain of the first stripe.

 

Lysandre stands in front of him, barefoot but otherwise still dressed. He is tapping the riding crop thoughtfully against his palm and staring at the Professor with an oddly cold expression of desire: acquisitional, territorial. The outline of his erection is unmistakeable in his trousers.

 

He steps forward and raises the crop, biting his lower lip, and Professor Sycamore thinks he looks so handsome and so dangerous and so wonderful that he cannot help but smile happily. Lysandre hesitates and lowers the riding crop.

 

“No,” he says, “don’t smile at me. I can’t do this if you smile at me.”

 

His lips twitch, he is trying not to smile back. Professor Sycamore, touched, smiles even wider, with difficulty (the ball gag is not designed for smiling through).

 

“Oh god,” mutters Lysandre, “you’re too cute,” and he drops the riding crop on the floor. Professor Sycamore makes a moue of disappointing, then mumbles with protest as Lysandre starts to untie him.

 

“I mean it,” says Lysandre. He frees Professor Sycamore’s wrists and catches him before he falls forward. “I can’t beat you til you’re weeping if you keep smiling at me like that.”

 

He unfastens the ball gag, and Professor Sycamore says, “Pluh! Pleh. Spuh! Pluh-pluh-pluh. Ahem. How disappointing. I was looking forward to not being able to put on a t-shirt without wincing.”

 

They stand there for a moment, holding one another and smiling stupidly.

 

“Well, what do you want to do instead?” asks Professor Sycamore, absentmindedly massaging his wrists.

 

Lysandre bites his bottom lip (Professor Sycamore never gets tired of seeing this) and says, “There is one thing I’d like to… but you’ll laugh at me.”

 

“I promise I won’t,” says Professor Sycamore, who has no intention of keeping this promise if Lysandre’s deepest darkest desire is hilarious enough.

 

Lysandre picks him up and carries him into his bedroom. They are in Lysandre’s private apartments, of course. Only Lysandre would buy a house and affix hooks to the ceiling.

 

He puts the Professor down on the bed and reaches for the top drawer of his bedside table. From it he produces a slim, well-thumbed book. When he holds it in his hands, it falls open naturally, to a page that his fingers must have often smoothed down, bent back. (Professor Sycamore finds himself briefly indulging in an improbable fantasy about being the book that Lysandre is rifling through; he is starting to think this relationship is making him not only a deviant but also just, more generally, a mad person.)

 

“Read this,” says Lysandre, handing it to him.

 

Professor Sycamore glances at the page. He can tell by the shape of the words that it is poetry, but it’s not in Kalosian.

 

“I can’t read Ingrand,” he says.

 

“Doesn’t matter,” says Lysandre. “There’s a Kalosian translation at the back- no, don’t turn to the back. You can read it afterwards. I just want you to read that aloud.”

 

“But I don’t know how to pronounce half of these words,” says Professor Sycamore, bemused.

 

“That doesn’t matter,” says Lysandre. “I just want to hear it in your voice.”

 

“What’s it about?”

 

Lysandre hesitates for a moment, then he says, “It’s a love poem.”

 

Professor Sycamore smiles at him again, and he smiles back. “Alright,” he says, and starts to read.

 

As soon as he has stumbled his way the first line, Lysandre shifts on the bed and pulls Professor Sycamore towards him,

 

“What are you doing?” he asks.

 

“Keep reading,” says Lysandre, and lowers his head. Professor Sycamore gets halfway through the second line before the sensation of Lysandre’s tongue teasing his cock makes him gasp and stop.

 

“Keep reading,” says Lysandre, amused.

 

He continues, stammering and fumbling with the unfamiliar words, his voice catching on the noises that he cannot help making. The further along the poem he progresses, the more passionately Lysandre works and the harder his cock gets, until his eyes do not focus on the words anymore, and he finds that he has dropped the book to put his hands on that beloved head, one foot on Lysandre’s shoulder, and the only thing he is saying is in Kalosian and it’s Lysandre’s name, again and again and again.

 

+++

 

They are walking beside the river when Professor Sycamore says, “Have you ever considered getting professional help?”

 

Lysandre seizes him by the upper arm and drags him along the street. They walk away from the river, towards one of the big plazas. ‘Walking’ is pushing it a bit: Lysandre marches and Professor Sycamore is forced along, tripping and stumbling.

 

Lysandre slows down after about five minutes and Professor Sycamore wrenches his arm away, pointedly shouting, “OUCH.” Several people look round. Lysandre, who hates it when Professor makes ‘a scene’ in public, as he puts it, flushes and gives him a furious look.

 

“What the fuck was that for?” says Professor Sycamore.

 

“I wanted to get you away from the river before I pushed you in,” says Lysandre, his voice quiet and angry. “Don’t you _dare_ say something like that to me again. You have _no idea._ ”

 

“I think I do, actually,” says Professor Sycamore, who has a faint, blush-pink rash on his cheek where Lysandre has slapped his face a little too hard during a protracted and sadistic bout of rough sex last night. “I think I have _some_ idea.”

 

Lysandre breathes out through his nostrils. There is a vein ticking under his eye, a twitching pulse on shadowed and exhausted skin. “No,” he says, still quiet. “You really don’t.”

 

“Try me,” snaps Professor Sycamore, who also has a bite-mark on his shoulder so vicious that he has felt his collarbones tingling with sympathetic pain all day.

 

“I’d rather not,” says Lysandre, suddenly cold and businesslike. “I’m busy and I don’t have time to listen to your asinine assumptions about the diagnosis and treatment of my problems.”

 

Before Professor Sycamore can say anything, he has turned on his heel and swept out of the plaza.

 

They do not speak for two whole days, and when they do, it is because Lysandre has called Professor Sycamore on the Holo Caster he had made especially for the Professor (it doubles as a watch). He asks if the Professor would like to come to the opening night of a new play with him. Neither of them bring up the fight.

 

+++

 

“And so, you see,” the Professor is saying, “I wonder whether there might be a type of stone that reacts only and specifically to humans, certain humans, certain special ones. It doesn’t seem all that unlikely – what are we but a very weak and selfish sort of Pokémon?”

 

They are lying in Professor Sycamore’s bed as he is saying this, facing one another. Lysandre is propped up on one elbow, looking with great seriousness into the Professor’s face. He appears to be intent on the Professor’s monologue.

 

“Speaking of stones,” Professor Sycamore continues, “I’ve come up with a theory about energy transference and psychosymbiosis that I think might interest you. I’m planning to run an experiment- ow!”

 

Lysandre, who has reached across and pinched something sharply on Professor Sycamore’s forehead, pulls his hands back. “Quoi?” he asks.

 

“Did you- did you just pop a spot on my forehead?” asks Professor Sycamore, aghast.

 

“Oui,” says Lysandre lazily.

 

“You’re disgusting.”

 

“I’m not as disgusting as what just came out of your face,” says Lysandre. Professor Sycamore isn’t standing for this. He sits up, seizes a pillow and hits Lysandre over the head with it. Lysandre curses.

 

“Don’t you swear at me, you, you- spot-popper!” exclaims Professor Sycamore, and hits him again. Lysandre gives him a threatening look, then he sits up, grabs his own pillow and thwacks Professor Sycamore with it.

 

Five minutes later, two grown men are chasing one another around the bedroom with pillows, stark bollock naked and giggling.

 

Professor Sycamore leaps onto the sagging armchair in the corner of his room and shouts, “The chair is Home! The chair is Home! You can’t get me if I’m on the chair!”

 

“Like hell I can’t,” says Lysandre, and bashes him on the bum with a bolster.

 

They crash about the room, laughing and flailing ineffectually, until a squawk a couple of rooms away makes them stop. It is unmistakably Beckett, unmistakeably making a noise meaning _if you fucking kids don’t keep the noise down I’m going to come back there and make you sorry_.

 

They fall to their knees, giggling and shushing one another, covering one another’s mouths and laughing through one another’s fingers. At times like this, nothing is more funny than a perpetually pissed off Talonflame.

 

Ten minutes later they are lying on the floor, entangled, moaning softly and moving against one another. They roll and writhe, they arch and enter one another, endlessly pleasuring, endlessly adoring, changing and fluid and sweet. They stay on the floor even though there is a perfectly good double bed a metre away from them, and for the rest of the week, they will touch the carpet burns on their knees and hips and the smalls of their backs and smile to themselves with a perfect and secret happiness.

 

+++

 

Lysandre is almost always the dominant partner, but every once in a while, they like to play at changing roles.

 

Tonight Lysandre is naked and tied, very thoroughly, to a chair. He has been so thoroughly tied because he has talked Professor Sycamore through the process of tying someone to a chair in a dry, distant voice, occasionally glancing down to say, “I’d make that knot higher and tighter if I were you.”

 

Professor Sycamore is wearing a uniform, of sorts. It is composed of several different uniforms, which he has found in charity shops and fancy dress shops, and is put together to give him a vaguely military, menacing air. He thinks he looks very sexy and he keeps on catching his own eye in the mirror. He has tipped his hat at a rakish angle and is trying to smoke a cigarette and speak at the same time.

 

“Remind me again what we’re rolepaying,” says Lysandre, who is staring hungrily at the cigarette. (Lysandre gave up smoking on his thirtieth birthday. It hasn’t been going well. So far he’s taken it up and quit again fourteen times.)

 

“You are a spy,” says Professor Sycamore. “I’ve just caught you sneaking around in our compound, trying to smuggle confidential information to the enemy. I have to torture and interrogate you until you confess.”

 

“Sounds fun,” says Lysandre. “Make sure you keep a loose wrist when you use that cane.”

 

Professor Sycamore pouts at him and snaps the cane across Lysandre’s bare thighs. Lysandre groans and shuts his eyes.

 

“Very good,” he mutters. Professor Sycamore sees his cock twitch and smiles.

 

The ‘interrogation’ goes rather well, at least to begin with. Professor Sycamore, who has a touch of the dramatic in his blood, immerses himself in the role and leaves Lysandre with some very satisfactory stripes and a cock wet with saliva and pre-cum. He spins a whole world out of one roleplay – in fact he is so carried away with the alternative universe he is conjuring for the two of them that he almost forgets that the entire purpose is to get round to doing the nasty with extra nastiness.

 

Nevertheless, the atmosphere is charged, sensual. That is, right until the moment that Professor Sycamore, straddling Lysandre’s lap and tapping the cane against his legs, says, “ _Tell me where the secret documents are hidden._ ”

 

Lysandre looks intently into his face. His mouth is burning from the kisses he has suffered; his hair is wild. He says, in a perfect deadpan, “They are hidden… up my arse.”

 

It takes about two seconds for this statement to penetrate Professor Sycamore’s thespian armour but when it does, he laughs so hard that he falls off Lysandre’s lap.

 

He is having hysterics on the floor when Lysandre says, very solemnly, “It is a two hundred and seventy two page document,” and Professor Sycamore just loses it.

 

He lies on his back, choking with laughter and gasping for breath, when he hears a thump and opens his eyes. Lysandre has attempted to lean over and say something else to him, but Lysandre is a big man and the weight of him leaning has caused the chair to fall over, with Lysandre still tied to it. Lysandre swears and Professor Sycamore grins at him.

 

“You are the worst sub _ever_ ,” he says.

 

Lysandre, because he physically can’t do anything else, sticks his tongue out.

 

+++

 

One night, when they are fucking, Lysandre hisses in his ear, “Tell me to stop.”

 

Professor Sycamore doesn’t want him to stop, if anything he wants to opposite, but he knows better than to do anything than as he is told when Lysandre has that look in his eye.

 

“Stop?” he says, tremulously, even as his hips buck and he arches his back, to take Lysandre deeper.

 

“Tell me you can’t stand it. Tell me I’m a monster,” says Lysandre. His voice is changed, vicious, almost unrecognisable. There’s an animal blankness in his eyes that frightens Professor Sycamore, and always has frightened him, no matter how many times he sees it.

 

He nervously repeats what he has been told to say, then yelps as Lysandre grabs a handful of his hair and pulls so hard that it forces his head back.

 

“Tell me it’s disgusting. Tell me I make you sick,” says Lysandre, who is leaning up now, alternately watching Professor Sycamore’s face and watching himself in the act of using Professor Sycamore.

 

“I- it’s disgusting. You- you- you make me sick,” says Professor Sycamore, who thinks none of these things.

 

It keeps on; it gets worse. Professor Sycamore lets himself be overpowered and contorted. When it’s like this, he feels like he is a man with bandages, hastily applying pressure to open wounds. His vision goes blurry and he sometimes finds himself hyperventilating through the sex, alternating panicking and succumbing to a horrible sort of pleasure. Sometimes he weeps, sometimes his face is too numb.

 

When he tries to embrace Lysandre during the erotic ordeal, Lysandre says, in a voice that is almost scared, “No, don’t put your arms around me!” So he puts them above his head and repeats the words Lysandre is putting in his mouth, thinking all the time, _let me make it better for you, mon amour, let me make it better, I can make it better, I’ll make you better, see what I let you do to make you better._

 

+++

 

When Lysandre is in a good mood, and they’re both not too busy, he will cook Professor Sycamore dinner at his private apartments. Théo the Pyroar will usually be present for these meals; he has a curious interest in the process of cooking, and watches his master with an expression of fond attention. After dinner, Théo will roam the rest of the building or even take a stroll outside, politely giving the two men some space. He usually does not reappear in the private apartments before morning. Professor Sycamore is grateful for this – he knows Théo usually sleeps with Lysandre, even though Lysandre insists that Théo is now too big to do that.

 

On this occasion, Lysandre has cooked a series of small, experimental dishes which he would like Professor Sycamore to try. “But you have to try them blindfolded,” he adds, as Professor Sycamore settles himself at the dining table, Théo’s chin resting on his lap. “They will probably taste delicious but I’ve only just decided on the ingredients and the cooking process. So their presentation is somewhat, ah, how can I put this…”

 

“It looks like someone threw them up then threw them away and then you found it and put it on a plate?” says Professor Sycamore helpfully. Lysandre rolls his eyes.

 

“Something like that,” he says, and carefully blindfolds him.

 

He spoon feeds Professor Sycamore too. Professor Sycamore rather likes that.

 

He gives Professor Sycamore a few mouthfuls of the first dish. “Enfin,” he says, “what do you think?”

 

Professor Sycamore chews thoughtfully and swallows. “It’s like being in a rainforest and then there is a rainbow and then a multicoloured bird flies overhead and goes ‘squawk!’” he says.

 

“Yes, thank you, Tasting Notes,” says Lysandre. “Try some of this one.”

 

Professor Sycamore is fed a little of the next dish. “Mm,” he says. “It is like watching a great glorious tornado touch the surface of the glassy sea, and the tornado sucks the sea up, and it is huge and magnificent and the waves that have been sucked into the sky form the shape of a giant thumbs-up.”

 

“Right,” says Lysandre. “Great. What about this one?”

 

Professor Sycamore only takes one mouthful of this before he says, “Pfeh! It is like waking up in the morning only to discover that you have lost your favourite shirt and _also your leg_ and now you have to give a presentation on trigonometry to the whole class and the class is in your bedroom and you’re naked.”

 

There is a scraping noise and a clunk. “What was that?” asks Professor Sycamore, startled.

 

“I threw it in the bin,” says Lysandre. “You’re an idiot but you’re an idiot gourmet, and anyway I wouldn’t ever want to feed you something that made you pull that face again.”

 

+++

 

Lysandre is an insomniac. Professor Sycamore privately believes that Lysandre’s body is forcing insomnia on him because, when he does sleep, he has such awful dreams.

 

One night, he is woken up at about three in the morning by the sound of Lysandre groaning as if he is in terrible pain, and shuddering convulsively. Lysandre is facing away from him, so he can only see his head and neck and back, but the skin that is visible is bathed in sweat and he can see Lysandre’s shoulder blades rolling painfully.

 

He wriggles towards him and wraps his arms around him, his forehead pressed against the back of Lysandre’s head.

 

“Ssh, ssh, mon ami, mon cher,” he says softly, and holds tight.

 

When this doesn’t work and Lysandre is still trapped in whatever nightmare he is having, he bites Lysandre sharply on the shoulder. Lysandre wakes up with a cry.

 

He holds him there and they are silent, except for the sound of Lysandre panting.

 

When his breathing slows, Professor Sycamore says, “You were suffering badly in a nightmare.”

 

Lysandre just shakes his head, unwilling to speak, and presses his back against Professor Sycamore’s chest.

 

After a little while, he says, in a soft voice, “Augustine?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Will you come inside me? Please?”

 

Lysandre almost never uses Professor Sycamore’s first name. He sometimes calls him ‘Professor’ but mostly he just says ‘you’, as if it were completely unnecessary to name him when he already owns him. In fact, he only ever uses the Professor’s first name in bed, and that is why hearing it always makes Professor Sycamore immediately hard. He doesn’t need telling twice.

 

“Can you pass me the lube,” he mumbles, as his erection swells and presses against Lysandre.

 

“Just spit,” says Lysandre, and Professor Sycamore obediently spits in his hand and rubs his hardening cock. Between the saliva and the sweat and Lysandre’s evident quiet desperation, it doesn’t take too much effort for him to push into him.

 

He starts to move, his breathing slowing down and coming in gasps. There is a full moon outside, which is shining through the window, and the moonlight makes Lysandre’s sweat-soaked neck look smooth, like ivory, like a white path of ivory. Lysandre takes one of his hands hand presses his against his heart so that Professor Sycamore can feel his heartbeat, tangling his fingers in the dense chest hair. He lifts his hand free to press Lysandre’s head against the pillow, the heel of his palm flat against Lysandre’s temple, and he hears Lysandre making strange noises, indistinguishable from either sobs or moans of pleasure.

 

After a little while he has to stop, because it feels too good and he is sure he is going to come. But when he stops, Lysandre keeps moving. Lysandre is pushing back into him, working his hips, moving himself on Professor Sycamore’s cock because it feels so good, and watching Lysandre pleasuring himself on his cock is altogether too much for Professor Sycamore, and he starts to meet Lysandre’s hips, forming inchoate noises as he begins to build towards a climax. Lysandre is coming too, he keeps saying it, “I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming,” and they manage to time it so that they come together.

 

When it’s over, and they’ve cleaned up as best they can, he falls asleep almost immediately, but as he drifts off, he can feel Lysandre’s miserable wakefulness, the blank night stare of a man who cannot and will not sleep.

 

+++

 

“How intelligent do you think Pokémon actually are?” Professor Sycamore asks. He is drunk.

 

“If you want me to say, ‘gosh, it’s almost like Théo understands everything I say’, I’m not going to say it,” says Lysandre, who is also drunk. “Because he just does. I don’t mean battle commands. I mean everything I say. That cat has the gift of, of, of-”

 

“Setting things on fire?” murmurs Professor Sycamore.

 

“I was _going_ to say _nuance_ ,” says Lysandre reproachfully.

 

“I wonder about Beckett and Vyvy a lot,” says Professor Sycamore. “For example, sometimes I take them to the office, or rather they take themselves to the office along with me, and I swear I’ve caught them reading my papers. And, I swear, no really, I swear this, I am sure I’ve seen them playing a sort of rudimentary game of checkers with the cutlery, across the tiles on the kitchen.”

 

“There’s a pun there,” mutters Lysandre. “I’m sure. Just let me think…”

 

“But then,” says Professor Sycamore loudly, “I’ve also seen Vyvy chasing her tail round and round, barking furiously at it, until she is so dizzy she falls over, and I’ve seen Becket try to build a nest out of my shirts. I mean, my _shirts_. Even a Pidove knows to use twigs. He had this really stupid expression on too, like it was the fault of my shirts that he couldn’t make a nest out of them. It’s not even like he can lay eggs.”

 

“No, I can’t think of a pun,” says Lysandre. “Wait, Beckett did _what_?”

 

They are drunk and they are lying in a shrubbery. To be exact, they are lying in a shrubbery in the grounds of the École Paranormale Superieure, in full evening dress.

 

There was technically an official party at the evolutionary biology department tonight, but the atmosphere inside was very hostile. Professor Fortmaine, her black eye now mostly healed but her arm still in a cast, had been practically icy to the head of Fleur-de-Lis even when they were both still sober. Their interaction was a synecdoche of the interaction of the entire room: the heads of the big corporations and certain government officials were being iced by the faculties of the most important Pokémon science departments at the École, led by Professor Fortmaine. This was supposed to be a goodwill party, held blithely despite the fact that martial law had been declared in Lumiose City following the riots. It had not been going well.

 

A few hours in, Professor Sycamore and Lysandre (lovers on opposite ends of the barricade, looking sheepish) had snuck out with a hip flask of whiskey. Now they lay on their backs in a shrubbery, the damp earth soaking in to their jackets, staring at the stars. They had been holding hands for the past half an hour and didn’t even realise it.

 

+++

 

Professor Sycamore found that, while he made a bad interrogator-of-spies, he made a good Pyroar tamer. And Lysandre made an _excellent_ Pyroar.

 

He’d bought Lysandre a collar and clipped it on to him one night while they were kissing on his sofa (lying against each other kissing lazily – Lysandre called it ‘showing me slowly’). It had all taken off from there.

 

Lysandre, rather surprisingly, loved the collar. “Take off all your clothes,” Professor Sycamore had said, and he’d done it without protesting. “Crawl on the floor, you’re a Pyroar,” he said, and Lysandre had done it.

 

Now he is tapping the head of his cock against Lysandre tongue and thinking, _See the amazing Pyroar tamer, he puts his ‘head’ into the mouth of the Pyroar_ , and biting the inside of his cheek to keep from sharing this joke. When Lysandre starts to suck in earnest, practically purring, he thinks, _It is feeding time at the zoo, the Pyroar eats the most meat of all the big cats_ and has to bite his cheek again.

 

“Crawl to the bedroom,” he says, and Lysandre messily disengages and licks his lips.

 

Professor Sycamore is aroused and amazed by how much Lysandre seems to be enjoying this game. Not only does he crawl on all fours to the bedroom but he keeps casting darkly flirtatious looks over his shoulder, checking that the Professor is following him.

 

If only I had a cock ring, thinks Professor Sycamore, I could put it on his cock and then think _the Pyroar tamer is making the Pyroar jump through hoops!_ Mon dieu, I am hilarious.

 

“I have a leash,” he says, when they reach the bedroom. “Sit still and be a good Pyroar while I find the leash.”

 

When he fastens the leash to the collar, Lysandre smiles at him dangerously. He tugs hard and Lysandre shuts his eyes with pleasure.

 

“You’re a good Pyroar,” he says, and then shrieks as Lysandre leaps up and forces him backwards onto the bed.

 

“You’re a sweet little human,” says Lysandre, “and I’ve got big sharp claws and big sharp teeth and I’m going to. Rip. You. To. Pieces.”

 

It is savage and it is wonderful. The next morning, Professor Sycamore is covered in welts and scratches and he feels light and airy and nice. But Lysandre is not without his own marks – he has a scattering of lovebites and a rather startling bruise around his neck, where Professor Sycamore pulled at the collar as he thrashed about in his ecstasies. He looks in the mirror admiringly and catches Professor Sycamore’s eye in the reflection.

 

“Not bad, Professor,” he says. “I shall have to wear a cravat today.” And he winks.

 

+++

 

They are having another one of their exhausting, enervating, never-ending, ever-repeating fights when Professor Sycamore snaps something about Lysandre’s father and the ‘issues’ he has left his son with, and Lysandre moves suddenly.

 

He stops himself before anything happens, and Professor Sycamore has quite fast reactions anyway, but the scene hangs in the air like a drop of blood about to fall – Lysandre’s hand, pulled back, stopped in mid-slap.

 

Professor Sycamore stares at it coolly and Lysandre stares at it as if it has just erupted in big purple boils.

 

“You were going to hit me,” says Professor Sycamore flatly.

 

“I,” says Lysandre, still staring at his hand, before he blinks and lowers it quickly.

 

“You were going to hit me,” Professor Sycamore repeats.

 

“I’m- I’m sorry,” says Lysandre. All the colour has drained from his face.

 

“I want to make this very clear,” says Professor Sycamore, his voice still flat. “I’m only going to say it once, so listen carefully. If you _ever_ hit me in anger, if you _ever_ strike me outside of the bedroom, because you’re pissed off and losing an argument, if you _ever_ do that, I will walk the fuck out of your life and I will not come back. Do I make myself clear?”

 

Lysandre is now staring down at the table, his face still white and shocked, but at this he looks up.

 

“Do you think that’s how it’s going to end?” he says.

 

And Professor Sycamore feels an awful burst of disappointment. Because it doesn’t matter how much cruelty he endures, how much of a martyr he makes himself to Lysandre’s sadistic urges, it doesn’t matter how much he takes and how much he takes away. Lysandre is not getting better.

 

If anything, he’s getting worse.

 

+++

 

They are walking side by side along one of the wide boulevards when the heavens open.

 

Professor Sycamore has never understood this phrase, ‘the heavens open’. When it rains as hard as this, the sky seems to close up and fold over, like waves closing over the heads of hapless swimmers.

 

All around them people run for doorways and awnings. Puddles form so quickly that it’s like watching strange water lilies growing in fast forward. Thunder grumbles it bad temper across the misted horizon.

 

Neither Lysandre nor Professor Sycamore have fled. They have stopped walking.

 

“Do you remember, once,” says Lysandre, raising his voice over the sound of the rain drumming on the pavement,“when we were out walking and it started raining… Before the Events at Calincourt.”

 

“I remember,” saysProfessor Sycamore. “I’m afraid I came over all romantic and tried to take your hand. But you ignored it and I had to pretend I was reaching for my hair.”

 

“No, I thought I’d mistaken your gesture,” says Lysandre. “I was so relieved I didn’t give in to the urge to grab you and take you into my arms.”

 

They squint at each other through the rainfall.

 

“Give in now?” Professor Sycamore suggests shyly, and Lysandre seizes him and presses him to his chest.

 

They kiss under the storm, soaking bodies pressed together. They kiss every kiss they should have kissed, and every kiss that should have been more tender, and every kiss that should have been more true. They kiss until Professor Sycamore pulls back and bursts out with, “You know that I love you, don’t you?”

 

Lysandre looks down at him. “I do now,” he says, so softly that the Professor almost doesn’t hear him. And then, even softer, so that Professor Sycamore has to shut his eyes and hold his breath to be sure he hears it:

 

“I love you too, Augustine Sycamore. I have been in love with you since the day I saw you. I have loved you constantly and unbearably for years. Sometimes I feel like the whole warp and weft of my being is a sickly piece of work made for no other purpose than to love you. I loved you before I had you, I love you now, and I will keep loving you long after I lose you.”

 

“You’ll never lose me,” says Professor Sycamore hoarsely. He has started to cry. He can’t help it.

 

“You’re wrong,” Lysandre whispers, and kisses him again.

 

The rain keeps falling all around them, and in that moment, at least, they are enclosed by the thunderstorm, in a perfect kiss that will be over soon but will last a lifetime.


End file.
